Great news today! STEALING WISHES is #5 on the Amazon Kindle in Genre Fiction!
#26 in literary fiction.
and #67 in humor!
Thanks to everyone whose been buying paperbacks or downloading it. Either way, I appreciate your support and readership.
Click here for the Amazon Kindle version!
Click here for a paperback!
Click here to download it to your computer!
I’m on Cloud 9 today after reading a blog review of STEALING WISHES from one of my readers. Check this out…
Stealing Wishes is refreshingly written, filled with characters who are drawn with an earnest sincerity, their conflicts and motivations believable and realistic, as the story’s subtle poignancy and charming wit makes for an extremely engaging read. The author’s portrayal of Blaine, an obsessive compulsive, makes no judgments on the character or his disorder, just a compassionate, insightful, straightforward reflection of what it’s like for someone who lives with OCD. The informal narrative with Blaine addressing the story directly to the readers, creates an atmosphere of ease and familiarity. When I had finished reading, I honestly felt like I had spent time with Blaine, sharing a cup of coffee with him, as he told me his story.
Check out the entire review here!
Thanks to angusdevotee over at LJ for the awesome review! She sounds super cool, and definitely someone I’d have coffee with too. Here’s a piece from her blog profile:
I’m currently an accountant for a small non-profit organization. I also volunteer with an animal rescue organization as a foster home, and I’m the expert (don’t ask my why?) on socializing feral kittens. I have the scars to prove it! My whole life has been dedicated to animal rescue, well ever since I was five and brought home my first stray cat. I currently live a “hop, skip and a jump” from Death Valley and near The Alabama Hills where my beloved B-western cowboys used to roam. (I like petting Autry’s rocks.) I’m also an active member of our local jeep club and I ardently fraternize with the club’s prez (my hubby). We’re proud parents of a gay son, who I’m happy to say refuses to walk the straight and narrow-minded. And we’re proudly owned by six fuzzy boys and one fuzzy girl (cats).
Hmmm…has a gay son, loves cats, loves coffee, loves to read, read my book, loved my book….angus is my new best friend! Thanks again angus!
Poor Starbucks! Apparently, closing for 3 hours to retrain employees a few months ago didn’t help.
Starbucks Corp. has announced it’s closing 600 underperforming stores in the United States.
The Seattle-based premium coffee company also announced it expects to open fewer than 200 new company-operated stores in the United States in fiscal 2009.
The company says it will try to place workers from those stores in other existing stores, but it’s just coffee and tips. We know most of those people will lose their jobs.
I have to laugh at Starbucks as a whole. You saturated the market, serving poor quality products and tricking everyone into thinking they were heaven. You also made us think that $7.00 for a latte is not a bad price although I can get two gallons of gas for the same price. You fought the morning rush hour with bad service and topped off our drinks with more foam and less drink.
In 2000, I worked in a B&N that had a cafe “serving Starbucks coffee.” I’m sure you’ve seen their logo in the window of you local B&N/cafe. Well, the cafe did so good that Starbucks actually came in and built a free standing store of their own next door, less than 20 feet across the road. B&N had never put it in their contracts that Starbucks couldn’t open up a store within so many feet of their own cafes, so how embarrassing for both companies!
I say good riddance! Now maybe the independent coffee sellers with good service, good products, and better prices can get back to business!
Over at Amazon.com today, the following image popped up on their home page and brought back a flood of memories. Can you believe it’s already time to start thinking about going back to school? I’m sure glad I don’t have to.
But did you ever wonder why we used a No. 2 Pencil? What happened to No. 1? Did you obsess over what kinds of pencils you wanted? I preferred the plain orangeish yellow Dixon Eldorado HB USA No. 2. It had a nice eraser. Every once in a while I’d buy one with a design on it (when those later became available), but I preferred that traditional off yellow. Remember those cheapy pencils that always left red streaks when you tried to erase with them. You always had to buy those colorful square pointy erasers to put on the end.
And let’s not forget the pencil sharpener that hung on the wall and made that whirring sound when you turned the crank. Someone would always go to empty the shavings and end up spilling them all over the floor, or they’d inhale the dust and start sneezing. Those long curls of zig zagged shavings always intrigued me. And who never got stabbed with a pencil and got lead stuck in their finger? And what about those naked brown pencils which someone forgot to paint? I loved those!
Gosh, that smell alone of freshly sharpened pencils brings back memories. But as I progressed through school those odd plastic pens claiming to be pencils came along. Kids now had tiny boxes filled with long thin pieces of lead to to refill their pen pencil. I hated those things.
Although I haven’t used an actual pencil in years, probably since high school – It’s all blue or black now and my obsession with Uniball Vision pens will have to be another post – it’s nice to see a small piece of my educational history still intact and going for $12.00 for a 96 pack on Amazon these days. Wow! Hey kids, you are lucky. We didn’t have Amazon back then. We had to go buy our school supplies and Wal-Mart or Target like everyone else. And why 96? Is it too much work just to put 4 more pencils in the pack and make it an even 100?
I bet no one ever stabs their classmate these days with a pencil. They’d be in court with a lawsuit on their hands in no time. Wow, how things have changed. In K through 8, there were 35 of us in class, unlike the tiny classes today they have so students can have more attention, and yet they still aren’t learning anything. But then again, we didn’t have metal detectors to walk through, or knives, or guns in our lockers. Occasionally, someone got caught with cigarettes. That was so taboo. Oh, and we spoke to one another in class and wrote notes and made those little pocket games out of paper where you opened flaps and discovered who you were going to marry and that you were going to live in a castle. We didn’t have IPods or cell phones, and couldn’t text one another. We didn’t have Xbox. Our first game was Oregon Trail and we learned how to play it on an Apple with an all green screen.
And at the end of the day, we didn’t have a computer to come home to to surf MySpace or write in our blogs. We did our homework with a No. 2 pencil. Ahhh, those were the days.
God, I’m old.
We lost a Golden Girl yesterday.
On July 22, 2008, at approximately 5:30 a.m. PDT, Estelle Getty died in her Hollywood Boulevard home in Los Angeles from natural causes (according to her manager), three days before her 85th birthday.
Each of Getty’s former Golden Girls co-stars reflected on her death: Rue McClanahan told the Associated Press, “Don’t feel sad about her passing. She will always be with us in her crowning achievement, Sophia.” Bea Arthur said in a statement, “Our mother-daughter relationship was one of the greatest comic duos ever, and I will miss her.” Betty White remarked, “The only comfort at this moment is that although Estelle has moved on, Sophia will always be with us.”
In honor of Estelle, Lifetime TV, which airs The Golden Girls, announced that it will air ten episodes of the
series featuring the best of Sophia on Friday, July 25. Fans can vote for their favorite episode on Lifetime’s website. The winning episode will be aired last in the marathon.
“Picture it, Sicily, 1933…”
From the Washington Post:
The American Family Association obviously didn’t foresee the problems that might arise with its strict policy to always replace the word “gay” with “homosexual” on the Web site of its Christian news outlet, OneNewsNow. The group’s automated system for changing the forbidden word wound up publishing a story about a world-class sprinter named “Tyson Homosexual” who qualified this week for the Beijing Olympics.
The problem: Tyson’s real last name is Gay. Therefore, OneNewsNow’s reliable software changed the Associated Press story about Tyson Gay’s amazing Olympic qualifying trial to read this way:
Tyson Homosexual was a blur in blue, sprinting 100 meters faster than anyone ever has.
His time of 9.68 seconds at the U.S. Olympic trials Sunday doesn’t count as a world record, because it was run with the help of a too-strong tailwind. Here’s what does matter: Homosexual qualified for his first Summer Games team and served notice he’s certainly someone to watch in Beijing.
“It means a lot to me,” the 25-year-old Homosexual said. “I’m glad my body could do it, because now I know I have it in me.”
You might think it’s a joke, until you read the original AP story, which begins this way:
Tyson Gay was a blur in blue, sprinting 100 meters faster than anyone ever has.
His time of 9.68 seconds at the U.S. Olympic trials Sunday doesn’t count as a world record, because it was run with the help of a too-strong tailwind. Here’s what does matter: Gay qualified for his first Summer Games team and served notice he’s certainly someone to watch in Beijing.
“It means a lot to me,” the 25-year-old Gay said. “I’m glad my body could do it, because now I know I have it in me.”
Contacted by the Sleuth for comment on the software mishap, American Family Association spokeswoman Cindy Roberts in Tupelo, Miss., told us, “I think it was just a fluke.”
Fred Jackson, news director of OneNewsNow, tells the Sleuth his organization has now fixed the software glitch. “We took the filter out for that word,” he said, without uttering the “G” word.
“We don’t object to the word ‘gay,’” Jackson explained, except “when it refers to people who practice a homosexual lifestyle.” And the “G” word, he says, has “been co-opted by a particular group of people.” (People who are g-a-y.)
The OneNewsNow story about Gay, which was spotted by blogger Ed Brayton at scienceblogs.com, as well as by gay blogs, including PageOneQ, even included these nice details about Mr. Homosexual’s qualifying sprint:
Wearing a royal blue uniform with red and white diagonal stripes across the front, along with matching shoes, all in a tribute to 1936 Olympic star Jesse Owens, Homosexual dominated the competition. He started well and pulled out to a comfortable lead by the 40-meter mark. This time, he kept pumping those legs all the way through the finish line, extending his lead. In Saturday’s opening heat, Homosexual pulled way up, way too soon, and nearly was caught by the field, before accelerating again and lunging in for fourth place.
But as Brayton at scienceblogs discovered, OneNewsNow’s filter didn’t work perfectly; the “G” word did slip through, just once:
Gay’s race came with the wind blowing at 4.1 meters per second; anything above 2.0 is not allowed for record purposes.
“I didn’t really care what the wind was,” Homosexual said.
The gay site goodasyou.org, which has long chronicled the AFA’s practice of changing AP copy to suit its conservative agenda, looks like it was first to spot the Gay gaffe.
The blog Agitator also found this gem of a story on the AFA’s OneNewsNow site, from a June 27 story article about NBA player Rudy Gay:
Memphis Grizzlies backers hit the hay hoping that Kevin Love would open things up for Rudy Homosexual in the frontcourt.
Incidentally, Jackson, the OneNewsNow news manager, tells us his organization doesn’t mind using the “L” word to refer to women who are homosexual. Asked how he would refer to Vice President Dick Cheney‘s gay daughter, Mary Cheney, Jackson said, “We would probably refer to her as a lesbian. Or homosexual.”
Hmmm…here’s my thoughts. They should replace the word ‘Christian’ with the word ‘Bigot.’ Oh wait, bigots usually go to church anyway!
So, the new Batman opened last night, reaching all new record numbers at the box office in ticket sales and popcorn consumption. There’s already a certain nostalgic quality to it due to Heath Ledger’s death. A local movie theater showed it at midnight here Thursday on 7 screens and 1400 people showed up. I do want to see it but will probably wait a few weeks. I’m not one for crowded theaters full of people who still can’t manage to turn off their cell phones and shut out the world for more than 3 hours.
I’ve always been a fan of the Batman since Tim Burton directed the first two. I thought the first film with Jack Nicholson as the joker was brilliant, and shook my head at the thought of Michael Keaton but he pulled it off. I immediately invested my tiny paycheck in anything Batman….posters, lapel pins, trading cards, even a rug in my bedroom. I went as the Joker for Halloween that year. It’s still hard to believe that was 1989.
Burton was back for the second installment which I thought was just as good. The villains, Catwoman and Penguin, made this movie so “Burtonisque.” And who doesn’t love Michelle Pfeiffer in that outfit!
Again, it was all about the villains in the third movie, Batman Forever in 1995. I loved Harvey Twoface and he made an excellent Halloween costume again that year. I hated Jim Carey and thought the Riddler role should have gone to Robin Williams. We got out first look at Robin here. Chris O’Donnell was quite the eye candy. Oh, and let’s not forget Batman and those nipples!
Schumacher really ran thin two years later with Batman and Robin. Don’t you remember? Arnold was Mr.
Freeze! “Ice to see you! Allow me to break the ice!” By then, like everyone else, I was tired of Batman and ready for a new hero. No wonder we all thought that would be the end of this movie franchise. Everyone thought Schumacher had killed the Batman!
But Christopher Nolan breathed new life into into it back in 2005 with Batman Begins, going back to the original dark comics and finally giving Batman himself the spotlight. I thought it was different and actually loved it. Would I have loved it back in 1989 had it been that first taste of Batman? Probably not.
But I love it now and I am very excited about the new film, and the new Joker. I also hear that Harvey TwoFace pops up in this one! But I have to wonder, is this the end of Batman finally? Is Hollywood done with him? What makes him so appealing? Outside of Superman, he’s the only other hero with just as much screen time.
With such record numbers at the box office, I seriously doubt this will be it. So if Nolan and Bale come out again to make another, I can’t help but wonder….who will be the villain this time?
Wow! Apparently, STEALING WISHES is doing better as an E-Book than it is right now in Paperback. It’s reached #43 in the GLBT category in Amazon Kindle sales. Thanks to all who have purchased it, in Ebook or Paperback! I hope you’ll post a review at Amazon after reading it!
Download STEALING WISHES to your Kindle here!
Buy the paperback at Amazon here for $12.60! Or look for me on Amazon here as MISTERYARBS. You can get a signed first edition copy shipped directly from me for just $12.00. That’s $3.00 off the cover price!
Don’t have a Kindle E-reader? Don’t worry! Download STEALING WISHES as an Ebook to your computer right here for just $5.00!
Barnes and Noble has it too!
After coming across recent stories about charities and good will in the news and on the television, and wanting to help spread the word about them, J has created a new WordPress blog at www.thecharitychest.com. Check it out, comment, and give him more suggestions to fill the chest with your own favorites that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Mimi Ausland is a 12 years old girl from Oregon, but after giving some serious thought to the “Free Rice” website that helps starving children, she went to her parents with the concept of creating a website to help starving pets. The result?
Visit the site, take a quiz, and every day that you do her corporate sponsor will donate 20 pieces of kibble to an animal shelter.
Mimi was highlighted on the Today’s show today, and has actually saved a shelter from going out of business. Pets are being abandoned at shelters more than ever these days due to home foreclosures! As the numbers in shelters go up, so does the demand to feed them.
So, click on the link and take that quiz every day this week! Right or wrong, an animal wins! And kudos to a twelve year old child with a big heart and a big mind for coming up with this!!
